Cod,
haddock and fishermen are endangered species, which will disappear
to be replaced by vast industrial vessels, catching trash fish for
producing fish meal and oil. While the quotas for cod and haddock
will be cut down to next to nothing, so that more and more small
cutters have to give up, the Danish industrial fishery alone can
– legally – land 50,000 tons of cod and haddock a year as
by-catches in their trash fish cargos. In comparison, the Danish
quota of cod and haddock for consumption in 2002 was only 13,000
tons. The question is which fishery policy the EU should support
on this background? Where would it be more reasonable to set in,
in order to restore the stocks?

The
fish and the fishermen are disappearing, because the fishery
policy has accepted and supported the destructive fishing methods,
which greedily and ruthlessly have been harvesting, without
thought of the future generations. The Danish Society for a LivingSea
has therefore drawn up the § 1 of the fundament, which the future
fishery administration should be build on. Read it at: http://gl.levendehav.dk/uk/dec-hirtshals.htm,
and some suggestions for the future fishery policy at:
http://gl.levendehav.dk/uk/pro-hirtshals.htm

We
hereby encourage the ministers’ council to pass a fishery
reform, which removes the vessels and the fishing methods, which
are the cause of the current situation, where the European fishery
is capsizing. The future fishery should be based on the fact that
fishing is a hunt for a living and limited natural resource.
Fishing should be done by responsible fishermen, who take this
basic consideration, and who are not controlled by greed and
carelessness towards other fishermen, present or future.